Author: ResearchGate

Abstracts:
- »Matsuno highlights how the comfort women solidarity movement developed after 2002 among those in a newly independent Timor-Leste, as the younger generation felt connected with the women based on a common experience of lack of recognition of suffering and struggle experienced under foreign occupation, elements of which are an integral part of Timorese national identity. This parallelism was especially seen among those who suffered sexual violence by or coerced sexual relationships with Indonesian soldiers. Like these individuals, the comfort women have been portrayed as both victims and heroes, as agents in the struggle against foreign domination. But as Timor-Leste has yet to write its own history, the stories of these women that Matsuno shares are scarcely told beyond its borders.« (Source: Mary M. McCarthy. »Knowledge production and activism on the ‘comfort women’ in Northeast and Southeast Asia.« Women's History Review 34(5) (2025): 678)

- »This article examines the context in which interest in Japanese wartime sexual slavery was born and developed among young people in post-liberation Timor-Leste (1999-) and explores the meaning that solidarity with survivors obtained in that context. Drawing on studies of the young/new generation of Timor-Leste, this article argues that the sense of suffering that had become part of national identity, particularly among the Indonesian-educated generation, made it possible for young people to imagine suffering of ‘comfort women’ from World War II. Against the backdrop of a widening gap between elites and ordinary people in the post-liberation period, young people showed great interest in the plight of wartime sexual slavery survivors. Parallel stories of sexual violence survivors from the Indonesian occupation period further catalysed the notion that victims were in fact part of the struggle. These developments contributed to the emergence of a people's perspective history as an alternative to the elitist narrative of the official history of Timor-Leste.« (Source: Women's History Review)

Wikipedia: History of Asia: History of Japan / Shōwa era | History of Asia: History of East-Timor / Indonesian Occupation of East Timor | Prostitution: Forced prostitution / Comfort women | Sex and the law: Wartime sexual violence / Sexual violence in World War II | War: Pacific War / Japanese war crimes